the large heavy plate glass windows which required my father's strong arm to draw up and let down! The only drawback to this delight was its short duration. Then the awful alighting at the hall-door, where the Squire himself received us, first consecrating his hand with a kiss before he presented it to my mother to conduct her to the great saloon, and seat her in one of the high-backed and well-stuffed crimson damask chairs, which, with their gilt and ponderous feet protruding for wards, were placed in a large and imposing circle at due distance from the fire-place. Then the dinner itself! the impatience with which we watched for the removal of the stewed carp, the haunch of venison, and the hashed calves head! even the great silver epergne, with its glittering store of pendent baskets, filled with pickles of every sort and colour, hardly obtained a glance from us: and it was not "savoury meat which our souls loved;" our hearts were fixed, and our appetites prepared for the second course, for well we knew the joys in reserve. At the head of the Squire's establishment was an old housekeeper, a tall portly matron, with dark hair coupled over a cushion of a foot high, on the top of which was a fabric of lace, and muslin and ribon, which would furnish materials for a dozen caps of moderate dimensions. Between this dignified female and the housekeeper of a neighbouring rich bachelor, the most active rivalry prevailed; our friend never went to London, an advantage her antagonist possessed, and by which she acquired many new modes of decorating a table; but these new fangled triumphs (as they were called in the Squire's family) were counterbalanced by our friend's superior invention, and resource in her own powers, and by a certain mystical compound called a quaking pudding, so supereminent in flavour as to be deemed unequalled. This receipt she declared she would not give to her own sister in her lifetime, but held out a hope of communicating it to my mother on her deathbed, in return for the benefit she conceived herself to have derived from my 25

ATHENEUM VOL. 1. new series.

father's sermons. The results of this struggle for fame were such as would make the erudite Dr. Kitchener, the renowned Ude, and the more humble George Frederick Nutt, hide their diminished heads. The glories of the second course, with such a stimulus, particularly when the rich bachelor was one of the party, can hardly be conceived in these degenerate days, when the profusion of sweets which used to deck the tables of our grandsires, are no longer in fashion. How our eyes widened as the butler approached the table, tottering under the weight of the glass salver, loaded with a pile of jellies and whipt syllabubs,--the truffle emulating Mont Blanc in height and snowy whiteness; the hen's nest in flummery; the desert islands of curds and candy! the still more admirable floating island, with its barleysugar temple, towards which two papier maché figures were proceeding, hand in hand, on a walk made of coloured comfits; in short, here were realized all Belvidera's wildest fancies, "Seas of milk and ships of amber." How we rejoiced in the success of the manoeuvres which had placed us at a distance from my mother's anxious eye, snugly sheltered by a good-natur ed, protuberant old lady, who always maintained that children could digest any thing and every thing, and who did all in her power to verify her theory by our practice; how dexterously we avoided seeing the warning finger held up; what a deaf ear we turned to the short hem which was uttered to call to our recollections the lessons of temperance which had been read to us in the morning; how little did we profit by them, and yet how often in the course of the evening did we tacitly acknowledge their wisdom. Of the Squire's lady I have a fainter recollection; but I remembered to have heard, that when married to him she was very beautiful, and sacrificed by an avaricious father before she was of an age to judge of what would constitute ber happiness. She was possessed of considerable talents and a high spirit; and had she borne her faculties more meekly, would have been as much es

SONG.

Oh speak not of love

As of that which might be,
If the love could pass over
I now feel for thee.

Oh speak not of falsehood,
For it must be thine;
I cannot in fancy

Dream of it as mine.

I have lived but for one love;
If that were no more,
Oh never could new love

Its likeness restore.

When the lamp of the vestal

Has chanced to expire,

It might be rekindled
By morning sunfire;

But, love once extinguished,
All efforts are vain,

There is nothing can brighten
Its embers again.

STAN ZAS.

Is it not so ?

It is a green and sunny place

That silent tomb,

And over it, with summer grace The wild flowers bloom;

And shadily that willow-tree

Floats on the air;

But lift up the smooth sod, and see Its dark things bare:

A blackening corpse, a rank, cold smell, Discoloured bones;

And slimy earthworms are what dwell In the damp stones.

And look thus on the human face

Is it not fair?

Yet look within the heart, and trace Such foulness there.

THE DREAM.

Farewell! and yet how may I teach
My heart to say Farewell to thee?
My first young love, the light, the hope,
The breath, the soul of life to me!

I had last night a strange wild dream,
The very emblem of my love,
I saw a stately eagle's wing

Become the refuge for a dove.

And for a while most tenderly
The eagle cherished his guest;
And never had the dove a home
Of happiness like that fond breast.

It was a sight for love to see

That haughty and that gentle bird, Caressing and carest, so soft

The mingling murmurs from them heard.

But troubled grew the eagle's crest,

And stern and careless his dark eye, And so, regardless of the dove,

I marvelled that she did not fly: Then sudden spread his mighty plumes, And flung the helpless dove away; There on the ground, with broken wing, And soiled and bleeding breast, she lay. Poor silly bird! if thou hadst flown,

Before, this fate had not been thine.

I wakened, and I thought how soon
Such fall, such falsehood, might be mine.

INDIAN SONG.

Founded on a romantic species of Divination practised by Indian Maidens.

To the moonlit waters of the lake

My little bark I gave,

And gentle as the jasmin's sigh

Was the wind that swept the wave,

I chose the night from many a one,

It was so very fair;

Scarcely the cocoa's light green plumes
Waved on the languid air.

Last year, beneath the summer moon,

I planted a young rose,

I water'd it at the sunrise,
And at the evening's close.

I only let one single flower
Amid the boughs abide,

Soon as they came I culled the beads
Of every bud beside.

I shaded it from the hot noon,
And from the midnight dew,
And fresh, and red, and beautiful,
My lonely rosebud grew.

This morning it was in its prime,
And then my bark I made

Of the green fragrant grass that grows
In the banana's shade,

I made a taper of white wax
From my own hive, whose bees
Had fed but upon hyacinth bells
And on young myrtle trees.

And in the bark that taper stood,

Hung with a wreath of green,
And in the midst my lovely rose
Sat like a fairy queen.

I threw rich spice and scented oils
Around the lighted flame,

And gave it to the stream, and called
Upon Camdeo's name.

My cheek blush'd warm, my heart beat high,
The bark moved slowly on;

There breath'd no wind, there moved no wave,
Yet like a thought 'twas gone.

Alas, my bark! Alas, my rose!
Yet what could I expect?

I sent them on a voyage of love,

And when was love not wreck'd ?— L. E. L.

tion in the spring; and he appears to have every material that can assist the historian, the man of science, the naturalist and the merchant.

There is an elaborate panoramic drawing of the magnificent capital of New Spain, taken from the top of the cathedral. It comprehends the whole of the celebrated valley of Mexico, the lakes of Tezcuco and Chalco, and the great pyramid of St. Juan de Teotechan, the snow-capped volcanoes of Pepocateptl, &c. There are also perspective views of the same city; of Puebla de los Angelos (containing 70 or 80,000 souls, and rich in public buildings;)* of Xalappa ;† of Vera Cruz (now no more ;) of the most cel ebrated mountains and volcanoes; of the most beautiful landscapes; of the most striking subjects of natural history; of agricultural instruments; and in short, of whatever belongs to the external forms of the country and people.

But what affords a more perfect notion of Mexico is a series of models, in full size as well as in little, of the fruits and vegetable productions. We never approached any thing so like the idea of a tropical climate as these give at one glance. The doubted hand tree, with its fruit resembling the human the gigantic and clustering shapes of the palms, bananas, plaintains, paupaws, avocatas, annonas, and hundreds of others whose forms are totally unknown to us, render credible the veriest stories of travellers, and when seen in their true forms and proportions, excite an astonishment which descriptions and pictures cannot create. A white gourd, like a bludgeon two feet long, may be instanced as one plant which struck us particularly; and we also remarked strings of a nameless fruit resembling our ropes of onions, but four or five feet in length, and more closely studded with cherry or plumlooking berries. Prodigious cactus, which with us yield no fruit, are here of the size of mis-shaped hair bottoms, and set round the edges with a scarlet fruit like our largest pears; and the

It has the richest churches perhaps in the world. The architecture is gorgeous, and the interior so vich, that in some the rails are of massy silver, as thick as a man's leg.

Whence our name of jalap. It grows there.

torch thistle, three feet in thickness, and thirty feet high, is seen with its massy stem, covered with flowers and fruits. Also, maize of extraordinary fertility and rich colours, and above sixty gourds in all the varieties of form which fancy could suggest.

To models of these and many others, Mr. Bullock has added specimens of all the productions that could be preserved in their natural state; and has brought with him (to enrich the Flora of England) a large collection of living plants, and seeds of the rarest and most beautiful flowers. These are now committed to British earth, and as their habitat was principally the table-land to the north of Mexico, a temperate and congenial climate, it may reasonably be hoped that their cultivation with us will be successful, and that in a few years we may not only see them naturalized, but extensively adorning our gardens

and shrubberies.

In natural history, his collection of preserved specimens seems to be as numerous, new, and interesting as in botany. Of nearly two hundred species of birds, the greater number are undescribed!! Many of these are humming birds of exquisite plumage and surpassing brilliancy; resembling the glittering and dazzling products of the mines round which they fly. Of these, Mr. B. had, at one time, seventy alive in one cage, and studied closely their motions and habits.

The fishes of Mexico and its coasts are also little known. Mr. B. has preserved a great variety, very singular in form and beautiful in colour. His catalogue embraces between two and three hundred species.

Mr. B. also brought with him several living animals, but they have not borne our climate; they are new, or little known in Europe. Among these are the Acolottl, or Wild Dog of Mexico; a miniature species of dog, scarcely the size of a rat, which burrows in the mountains, in the neighbourhood of Durangon; a new species of Deer, Armadillos, Currassows, Flamingos,

* Among his stuffed animals are, a frog of the bulk of a tolerable tortoise, which is contrasted by this dog, much less than the frog. On looking at them together, one fancies that the reptile could easily swallow the quadruped.